


In Extremis

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Ultraviolet UK (tv)
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:New Year Resolutions 2007, recipient:widget
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-04
Updated: 2007-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 20:52:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack has invited Michael to meet, one night, no tricks, no surprises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Extremis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [widget](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=widget).



> Many thanks to Leyenn, beta of all betas, who gave me the fastest turnaround I've ever seen.

Despite knowing it was a bad idea, despite knowing if he asked anyone else if it was a bad idea they'd tell him so, and despite telling himself several times in no uncertain terms that it was a bad idea, Michael showed up at the club shortly after ten looking for Jack.

The detective side of his brain ran down a quick list of adjectives: Goth club, underground, lots of black, strobe lights, dark. There weren't any obvious mirrors. He found Jack at a corner table posing on his chair, in black leather pants that looked like they'd been airbrushed on and a white lacy shirt/black velvet coat combination that looked as though he'd stolen it from John Pertwee.

Jack raked him over with his eyes and smirked. "Look at you. You're not even trying."

He sighed and took the other chair. The video attachment jabbed him in the small of his back and he shifted uneasily. "What am I doing here?"

"Like you'd turn away a chance to keep an eye on me for an entire night. No tricks, I promise." Jack leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand. "So how's work? Keeping you busy?"

"None of your business."

"Well it _is_, really. But I'll take your point."

"What have _you_ been up to?"

Jack grinned, a flash of even white teeth in the gloom. "Nothing too exciting. Keeping my head down. Learning what I got myself into."

"I thought you were pretty confident about that."

Jack shrugged. "There are perks, yeah. But I'm learning about the pitfalls, too. Look, I'll get the first round, all right?"

Mike glared. "You don't drink. Anymore."

The grin he got back was wicked. "Not lager, no, but it'll look suspicious if I don't have anything. You can have my pint if you like." He didn't wait for an answer, just slid out of his chair and swiveled his way through the dance floor, occasionally rubbing up against a bit of tail in more than a friendly way.

When he returned, he had the eyes of half the girls in the club on him, and he knew it. Mike glared and ignored Jack's raised glass. "What are you playing at?"

"Jesus, Mike. I just wanted to see you. You're treating me like some kind of criminal." He looked affronted. He also didn't do more than touch the rim of his glass to his lips.

"What about Kirsty?" Mike finally asked.

Jack pouted. "I do like her. But I'll leave her to you, if you'd like."

"Like her enough to use her as a shield," he muttered.

"Christ's sake, Mike. Your friends had guns on me. Not exactly sporting." He cast his eye around the club. "I want to dance. Do you want to come dance?"

"No."

"Well, I'm going to." He dropped out of his chair again, flicked his hair back, and stepped under a strobe light, shaking out his shoulders before settling into the grinding rhythm.

Mike stared down into his lager and grimaced. This was not how he wanted the night to go. Not that he exactly had any illusions about things going well. But this was... less than well. This was downright unpleasant.

And what the hell had he meant, really? 'Do you want to dance?' What was that? Was that some sort of--no, really, what was that?

He looked out and saw Jack already finding company--not that it had ever been hard for Jack to find company, on a dance floor or otherwise. He drifted from girl to girl for a while like a particularly poisonous butterfly before finally settling on one of the girls who had been staring earlier: short, slightly dumpy, in a corset and uncomfortable-looking heels. Jack started dancing closer to her, and the look of awe on her face under the blinking lights made Mike swallow hard and look back into his drink.

When he nerved himself to look up again, Jack's face was buried in the girl's hair, and he was grinding into her from behind, hands pressed flat against the artificial flatness of her stomach. Mike didn't look up again until the song was over.

Jack was dragging the girl back to their table.

She hovered, nervous, as Jack climbed back into his perch and his pose. "This is Mike," he said, waving a negligent hand. "He's my friend."

"Hi," the girl said. Her lips and eyes were lined in black rings of identical thickness, making her look like a cartoon. "I'm Amy. Is he really..."

Mike looked at Jack, startled. Jack grinned. Like a predator. "What did you tell her?" Mike asked, dreading the answer.

"The truth," Jack said. He reached out and with a finger traced the vein down Amy's throat. "Thought it was only polite."

Oh, God. He'd done it, he really had. And this... this girl had just bought it, just gone for it, because she thought it was somehow... he didn't know what.

Amy was still staring at him. "Is he telling the truth?"

Jack was smirking. Mike looked between them, finally found his mouth working until he said, "Yeah, he is."

Amy's eyes rolled back in ecstasy. Jack chuckled and ran his fingers up her back into her hair. "Oh, God," she said. "This is... you said... I'll do anything..."

"Right, love, right," Jack said. He grabbed her shoulder and used her as leverage to jump to his feet. "We'll be outside a second, all right?"

Mike made as if to stand, was stopped by the cockiness of Jack's grin. Without moving his hand from Amy's shoulder, Jack leaned in quickly and said, "What's better, a goth chickie from some club or someone _important?"_

He couldn't argue with that logic. Of course, he couldn't argue with Vaughan's logic, which would be to follow them outside and shoot him anyway.

He couldn't explain why he just watched them go, then turned and finished first his lager and then Jack's, in quick succession.

The buzz was just starting to kick in when Jack came back, wiping at his lips with the side of his hand. He grinned when he saw the empty glasses, and his teeth were dark. "Looks like we both had the same idea."

"Seriously, Jack," he said. "Why am I here?"

"Because I asked you to come," Jack said reasonably. "It's your turn to buy a round."

Mike shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the door. Jack sniffed and went back to watching the crowd. In a couple minutes Amy walked in, unsteady, eyes refusing to focus properly. She wove her way to a table and sat down, blinking into the lights.

Jack snorted. "Forget her. She's nothing."

"You can't just use people like that."

"Oh, so when I do it it's bad, but when the government or your lot does it everything's okay? I at least asked first." He quirked an eyebrow.

Mike shook his head. "The people you're working for want to destroy everything."

"Not me, mate. I like people." He shrugged. "We had a difference of opinion."

Mike sighed. Jack frowned, leaned forward across the table. "What. Don't you trust me?"

"No." That question was easy to answer.

Jack looked affronted. "Ten years, and you don't trust me. That's sad."

"You've changed."

"Have I changed so much?"

Mike looked up, into Jack's earnest expression. Then he nodded. "Yeah. You've changed. You're a good actor, but you have."

Jack frowned and stared out at the dance floor again.

The pervading bass line was making it hard to concentrate. The writhing forms on the dance floor looked to be having far too much fun, oblivious to the world outside, certainly oblivious to the problems the world outside was missing. The problem sitting right across from him, also staring moodily into the crowd.

"I think I want to dance some more," Jack said.

Mike sighed and pushed the empty glasses into the middle of the table. "Go right ahead."

"C'mon." Jack reached out and tugged his wrist. "You've been thinking too much. You ought to get out and enjoy yourself."

"No thanks," he said, snatching his hand back.

Jack's smile was incandescent. "C'mon. You ought to dance."

Mike shook his head. "Bite got cleaned up. You can't just push me like that."

"No? So hypnosis is more likely to work than appealing to your better nature?" Jack shrugged and stood. "I don't think that's right."

"What does my better nature have to do with dancing?"

Jack smirked, turned on him. "Come on. I want to dance with you."

Mike stared at him, almost aghast. "God, I didn't know crossing over turned you queer."

"Oh?" That grin again. He hadn't stopped smiling for an instant. "It's not the only thing that does. I want to dance. With you. That's what clubs are for, right?"

It was getting really, really hard to breathe. "I don't..."

"Stop protesting. Fuck it all. C'mon."

He was sure he hadn't been infected. This wasn't what it felt like to be suggestible. But how else to explain that he was following Jack down to the dance floor, in some sort of dreamlike state?

He'd never been as good a dancer as Jack. He'd never been able to do the things that got women to stare at him, never felt at ease pretending to be more attractive than he was. Jack was like mercury. And now Jack was pressed against him, practically hands in his pockets, and somehow _that_ rhythm was melding with _this_ rhythm and the music was rocking them this way and that and everything was dizzy.

Jack spun around and ground his arse into Mike's crotch, and damn, and he grabbed Jack's hips and hung on and echoed that terrible, animal movement, and after a minute Jack turned around again and wrapped his arms around Mike's shoulders and said, "Watch the goth girls. Look at them. We're making them hornier than they've ever been in their desperate, poser lives."

He was panting, out of breath, but Jack wasn't even sweating. Wouldn't sweat. Jack's hands were strong, his forehead cool against Mike's own. He risked a glance to the side of the floor where a couple girls in black were dancing, and the jealous glares he got in response made him shudder and look back into Jack's eyes, cold and blue and just somehow not the same, even now.

He grabbed Jack's lapels and pulled, and then he was tasting the blood in Jack's mouth and grinding against him and Jack's hands were on his arse and and and and and--

"Come on," Jack said into his mouth. "Let's take this outside."

The girls were shooting him murderous looks as they left. He couldn't think enough to care.

The alley next to the club must have been where Jack had taken the girl. He could almost smell the blood on the wall as he was pressed against the brick, as Jack's mouth came down on his again and suddenly that blood smell-taste overwhelmed his senses and Jack's hands started creeping down the front of his shirt to his trousers.

He flinched away when Jack ran his tongue over the scar on his neck, and Jack grinned. "I won't bite," he whispered. "Promise."

"Not again," he said.

"Wouldn't be sporting," Jack said, and dug Mike's cock out of his pants.

He was burning, Jack's hand was cool, Jack's mouth was only slightly warmer, the video attachment was digging into his back again. Jack's hair was wiry with whatever hairspray crap he'd used and Mike dug his fingers in anyway, hard, and when he threw his head back he hit his head on the brick and saw sparks, and Jack looked up and met his eyes when he swallowed, and he lost it, lost it, couldn't hold on even for a moment.

He shuddered slightly as Jack gave the head of his cock one last lick before tucking him away. Mike brushed himself off and tucked his shirt back in as best he could as Jack stood, then leaned over him, just close enough to feel but not touch.

"Didn't think you were the type to swallow," Mike finally said when he had breath.

Jack didn't waste the opportunity to smirk at him. "Don't worry. I'll puke it all up later."

"Oh, thank you for that image." He shook his head. Then he shook it again. "God."

"Not quite, but thanks for the compliment." Gentle fingers on his neck, and then he was tasting himself and Amy's blood on Jack's tongue, all salt and copper-red. He shifted his legs around and Jack still wasn't hard, and that more than anything else about this was totally crazy.

Jack chuckled, pulling back, and tossed his hair back over his shoulders. "Let's keep in touch, then," he said, then touched his fingers to his lips and turned away down the alley.

Mike rested his head back on the brick and wondered how long it was going to take before he could look himself in the mirror.


End file.
